Practical Tips: Four New Trends in Mobile Game Promotion in 2015

Last week, AppLift attended PGConnects in London, organized by SteelMedia. As always, PGConnects is a great opportunity for industry insiders to communicate and build connections, and also an opportunity to learn about the latest trends in mobile game promotion .

In this article, we will mainly present to you four new trends in mobile game promotion in the coming year.

1. The mobile marketing industry is consolidating

In Eric Seufert's industry report, he pointed out that the mobile promotion landscape (especially advertising technology) is undergoing vertical integration, and full-stack advertising technology is also emerging.

As Eric said, this trend is not limited to advertising technology (because existing technologies provide development tools for developers and publishers), nor is it limited to advertising channels. From development to distribution, promotion and monetization, it brings new value to the entire application value chain and user life cycle.

The big five web giants (you can include Twitter in this category, too) all offer full-stack services. They acquire users through external transactions or internal development. For example:

Facebook acquired Parese (which provides backend services for mobile applications) for application development; Atlas built Facebook's open advertising network to increase its user base in order to improve its advertising service capabilities.

Apple acquired TestFlight for app testing; Topsy is currently developing a new version of iTunes Analytics to provide more post-app installation data (such as retention rate ) in order to understand user behavior.

Twitter acquired MoPub to expand its user base and recently acquired Fabric (an application development platform).

2. Video is the next breakthrough point for mobile marketing

The numbers don’t lie: U.S. mobile advertising video consumption will increase exponentially over the next few years. In 2014, mobile advertising video spending in the United States was $1.55 billion, and it is expected that by 2018, this figure will rise to $12.82 billion. As the data of online video consumption will not increase significantly in the same period of time, the share of mobile advertising will increase from 25% to 50% in the next four years.

We can identify this trend through several transactions in 2014:

Amazon acquires video-sharing platform Twitch

Opera acquires video network company Adcolony

Facebook acquires LiveRail

Yahoo acquires Brightroll

Facebook implements autoplay for mobile videos

Twitter reveals its own video player

Last week, mobile game studio Hipster Whale announced that its game CrossyRoad has earned more than $1 million from its own video ads on iOS alone.

3. Brands are entering the mobile market, including mobile games

Generally speaking, there are two ways for games to benefit from branding: building their own brand (which TV channels can help promote), or partnering with an existing brand. Over the past few years, rising promotion costs and chart inflation pressures have made it difficult for mobile game and app developers to stay on top and focus on a positive return on investment (ROI) on their advertising spend. This phenomenon has triggered a wave of mobile game publishers partnering with existing and well-known IP holders. In order to increase people's impression of the game and fully enhance the performance of the promotion.

Chris Petrovic of Kabam explains the benefits of this relationship:

To game publishers:

Gain access to highly recognizable IP and opportunities to reach global consumers

Well-known IP can help get recommendations from app stores , improve UA and overall game performance

For brands:

Better enhance brand value

It can create a highly sticky and long-lasting gaming experience (players can engage with the brand 24 hours a day, which helps to maintain brand activity before the next product is released)

Global development and distribution capabilities

Robby Yung of Animoca Hong Kong also gave his own views on brand cooperation:

Mobile game publishers should seize the opportunity to leverage their brand to:

Improve your presence in the app store

Tap into your existing fan base

Differentiating in a crowded market

Adjust promotion expenses (increase ROI)

On the other hand, you also need to understand the brand’s expectations:

Contrary to popular belief, the number one reason brands work with studios isn’t money. They are not interested in how much incremental revenue you can bring them, and in fact, in most cases, they don't need you at all. As Rubby said, “Are you going to screw up my brand?” That’s their main focus. Through partnerships, IP holders hope to generate brand value for at least the next 5 years.

4. How to enter Asia – Reloading

The Asian market accounts for half of global mobile game revenue, and this was the last time PG Connects reported data. This number will continue to increase.

Below, we will briefly analyze the four major markets in Asia.

China

There is no doubt that China is the largest market in terms of user base. Statistics show that China had more than 90 million 4G users in 2014, and the number is expected to reach 250 million in 2015.

60% of the 800 million active devices are located in third- and fourth-tier cities.

38% of Chinese mobile game players are female.

56% of Chinese mobile game players use large-screen devices with high resolution (above 720P).

Chinese mobile game players are concentrated in China's eastern coastal areas.

Japan

Japan accounts for 30% of global mobile game revenue, and on the iOS platform, the revenue generated per download is three times the global average, and on Android it is six times the global average. ARPPUs are in the $200 range, and games with ARPUs above $5 are very common.

What works in Japan: TV ads and offline promotion , as well as distribution through mobile operators ' app stores.

Important things for the Japanese market: players are highly sensitive to fonts, concise tutorials (short, accurate and story-telling), second-day retention (should be at least 30%), fast connections, and servers located in Japan.

South Korea

LTE penetration rate is 99% (the highest in the world).

The smartphone penetration rate is 73%.

With high investments in TV and outdoor advertising, offline advertising is the only way to get on the list – players love to play games on the subway!